NORTH KOREA has somewhat ironically waded into the NSA spying scandal currently causing outrage across the globe, rushing to the defence of American civil liberties.

North Korea has lambasted the US in a rant against the NSA spying scandal

The North even argued that the revelations of mass surveillance operations demonstrated the United States was the "kingpin" of rights abuse.

The secretive state's horror at the NSA's actions, conflicts slightly with rights groups and defectors who have long accused the North of brutal totalitarian practices.

These include suppression of dissent, the operation of a prison camp network holding some 200,000 inmates and a "military-first" policy that has led to periodic famines.

Horrific North Korean gulags, where starving prisoners are forced to eat the feces of other inmates in order to survive, are swelling due to a recent clamp-down on defectors desperately trying to escape, disturbing reports have also revealed.

However, commentary in a North Korean state newspaper said allegations of the US monitoring of telephones and emails by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden meant Americans and foreigners alike had been "subject to the espionage that has been applied indiscriminately by the US intelligence institution".

Whistleblower Edward Snowden worked as a contract employee at the US National Security Agency

"This clearly proves once again the US is a kingpin of human rights abuses as it puts the world under its watch network and has conducted espionage against mankind," said the commentary, cited by the official KCNA news agency.

"Each individual is entitled to live and develop with dignity as a social being," it said. "But in American society, where the jungle law prevails, only the strong men's rights over the weak men are recognised."

It said that explanations by US officials that the programmes sought to prevent terrorism were "just a lame excuse to cover up (the) crime".

Snowden, believed to be in hiding in Hong Kong, hit back yesterday at critics who have denounced him as a traitor for revealing the operations.

He said he made his disclosures to counter "a litany of lies" by senior officials to US Congress.

Kim Jong Un has been accused of crimes against humanity

Each individual is entitled to live and develop with dignity as a social being

North Korea

While the United Nations has launched an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in North Korea, authorities in Pyongyang continue to deny the existence of prison camps and say they will not cooperate with the probe.

Earlier this year, when the North was busy threatening nuclear annihilation against America and South Korea, KCNA declared the North free of rights abuses saying "they cannot exist".

It accused the US and South Korea of launching "a desperate effort to evade a shameful defeat in the nuclear standoff with (North Korea) and invent a pretext for invasion and pressure".

North Korea is also believed to be running a large corps of computer experts aimed at hacking into the networks of governments and financial institutions, most notably blamed for the 2011 shutdown of a South Korean commercial bank.